Maria Blau

Gothic glimpses in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye or representations of art and media and mysterious twin ship Maria Blau

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2.0, University of Constance (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Seminar: The Nature-Culture Paradigm in Canadian Literature, 17 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye is a novel that certainly covers plenty of discourses and touches several genres. At the head of all it can well be considered to be a bildungs- or künstlerroman in the guise of the fictive autobiography. Many critics have pointed out that it is one of Atwood most personal novels, a piece that undoubtedly turns "the tables on their own kind"1, that has many autobiographical features. But that will not be the concern in my following reflections which will rather deal with the gothic elements of the novel. My readers may argue that it is rather Atwood's Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace that are obliged to the gothic theme.2 But it is actually Cat's Eye that offers the vast range of gothic elements that correspond to each other and to the various levels of representation the novel offers. I regard it as necessary to deliver a short definition of the gothic novel in the first place. However, I want to point out that I do not see Cat's Eye just in the dark illumination of the gothic. I rather pick up and explain different gothic gatherings and "gothic games" Atwood plays with the reader than devote my analysis to the issue completely.